Chickadee
by woodbyne
Summary: When two worlds collide, it is inevitable that things will change, and that that change might not always be good. Matt struggles with the way he's always been and Matthew struggles with what he is becoming. The worst time to try and create something other is when you are not yet sure of yourself. 1p2p Canada and 1p2p America.
1. Here Comes Trouble

Loneliness was a stalwart companion. Once loneliness has been befriended, then there's nowhere you can't go, and no one you need to depend on but yourself, or so Matt had found. It had been that way for a while now. He wasn't sure when he had started to hang with loneliness, but all the same they were pretty tight.

On the other hand, loneliness is a drug that's hard to kick. Matt would find himself tempted to maybe not be lonely for a while, or even to be lonely with someone else. But then the call of his solitary existence would overwhelm him, dragging him back in to the depths of his own mind. Quiet and slumped, watching others from afar, his eyes too hooded with something that was never quite going to be narcissism to bother identifying faces and placing names to them.

But then he walked past.

Somewhere in the middle ground. Somewhere in between the peace-keeping parties between the nations and their alternate counterparts, he wandered through. On a coffee run, the softly curling wings of his hair pushed back by a passing air current. There was something transient about the way he held himself, as though he was simply moving through this meeting, this world, and Matt's line of vision with no intention of staying.

But then he paused, feeling someone's eyes on him, his head turned, and Matt's dull gaze met Matthew's clear, fresh face. The ephemeral solidified, present and there. Too far too call out, too far to smile. But not too far to raise one hand in a mock salute. Hesitantly and, much to the distant Canadian's pleasant surprise, fearlessly the salute was returned. It wasn't sloppy and limp wristed, but rather carefully straight and precise; a proper military salute.

Just as quickly as he had appeared, solidly ephemeral Matthew strode off with his quick, clicking steps and shined leather shoes. But still he remained in the forefront of Matt's mind and the meeting he had distanced himself from grew further still from his mind. The colour of the other's eyes was duller, but they themselves were brighter. Too full of honest intention and good will to be in any way suited to Matt's own violent apathy. And yet somehow, from that single glance, he was drawn. He wanted to find more differences, more opposites. More ways in which they balanced each other out.

~====o)0(o====~

"Yo, Matt," Alfred called, his felicitation somewhat underappreciated when the man to whom he spoke only wanted to go back to his old friend loneliness. Loneliness who was currently attempting to dissuade him from his train of thought. He didn't want that. He wanted to think and here was Alfred with his chestnut tan and his mahogany tan, looking like the burned remains of a city after nuclear fallout. "You talked to your alter yet? Mine's a pious little shitbag, but yummy as fuck."

The American flopped down, uninvited, his legs tangling with Matt's, merging like the borderlands between them. His neighbour licked his lips, wetting them, feeling cracks and scars and stinging splits he hadn't known he had.

"Nah," Matt sighed, voice creaking with disuse, "Looks a little baby-faced. Clean cut."

"You two are kinda the same though. Both quiet like. Only he's legit passive. Peace-keeper, y'know? Fuck. I think you start most of our fights," Alfred's laughter was too loud in the silence that Matt wanted to have.

"I finish them too," he said warningly, looking sidelong at Alfred before letting his eyes wander along the lines off nations in the distance, trying to catch bright eyes and softly waving hair.

"That's cause you're not a person, you're a fucking machine. You still owe me a tooth," the American's words rain from the sky, softly onto Matt's face. He doesn't say that he want to be left alone, but something in his mood shift made it obvious, and the conversation ended as Alfred got up and walked away.

Like snow, the words came. He didn't notice them falling, but when he looked around, they were everywhere. In his reflection, in the bottom of his coffee cup. In the tremulously brief glances he caught of an angel's golden halo.

_You're not a person. _

_You're a _machine_._

~====o)0(o====~

"You're supposed to be interesting," Matt said flatly, looking at Matthew with the same, flat disinterest as he usually does everything else. But he didn't mean it. He wanted to look honestly curious, maybe even politely interested, but his face seemed to have forgotten how and all he got was the hooded expression of impending malice that appeared on his face by default.

"Sorry?" Matthew tried, leaning backwards slightly as he attempted to fathom whom had said that about him, when, and why they had felt the need to relate it to his pants-shittingly scary alternate.

"Why?" The question didn't snap out like a rubber band on a bare arm, but it had the same effect, and the more put-together Canadian flinched away from his double.

"Because I'm not interesting?" he asked, knowing that it shouldn't have been a question and hating himself because it was.

"I never said you weren't interesting," Matt shrugged with careless disinterest, though there was a spark to his too-bright eyes that had perhaps been missing before, "I stated my expectation of you."

"What gives you the right to expect anything from me?" Matthew said at last, finding his footing in this seemingly non sequitur conversation, "You don't know me."

Again, Matt shrugged, eyes wandering curiously over the affronted frown, the little M-shaped crinkle on his forehead, and wondered what would happen if his own face could pull that sweetly disgruntled expression.

"No," the alternate said slowly, "I don't."

~====o)0(o====~

"You eat a lot of meat," Matthew said reproachfully as he eyed Matt's rack of ribs and the way the alternate was peeling the flesh from the bones with his teeth the way only a born carnivore could.

"And you eat a lot of birdseed, chickadee," the other Canadian said, sparing a glance at the plate that his double had carefully divided into essential food groups.

"You keep calling me that," Matthew said, the frown that was so often on his face around Matt once more present. He had the look about him of a man with a problem that he can't solve, no matter how hard he tries, "Why?"

"What, chickadee?" Of course, chickadee. Matt knew exactly what the other was taking about, but it was it was nice to see the frown drop, even if it was only for the second that it took chickadee to roll his eyes, "It's the provincial bird of New Brunswick."

"New Brunswick, Minnesota and Michigan," Matthew rattled off, "I never took you for a birdwatcher."

"And I took you for a bird," the alternate's lips pulled in the facial equivalent of a shrug, "What the hell are Minnesota and Michigan?"

"What do you-? Wait, what do you mean-? They're Alfred's states!" The mobile Michelangelo in front of him opened his palms, begging Matt to admit to a joke.

"Alfred has _states_? Jesus, that's rich!" Matt's head tipped back and Matthew just stared as his double's hollow, lonely laughter echoed around the room, bouncing emptily off the walls. It was an unused sound, as though it hadn't had cause to exist before. Matthew felt both honoured and afraid to hear it. Once he'd calmed down, the Alternate leant in, something that was almost a smile on his lips, "You're interesting, chickadee. Tell me more."

~====o)0(o====~

"Your Alfred broke mine," Matthew said, a statement of fact, but it hadn't come off as cool as he had intended. There was anger beneath it. Justifiable anger, but anger none the less.

"Looks fine to me," Matt answered, sparing only the barest glance for the blond American who was currently gathering a circle of spectators to one of his conversations. He spotted his own Alfred lurking at the back of the pressing crowd, a sleepy smile on his lips.

"He looks fine, sure! But he's _broken_. There's something wrong with him. He's gone cruel," Matthew looked genuinely upset, and Matt did his best to affix some kind of sympathy to his face, but he got the feeling that it looked more like a grimace.

"How is that my Alfred's fault?" the alternate asked, trying to get to the root cause of all this distress and remove it. Little, compassionate thoughts were worming their way into his mind. Making him kind.

"I don't know! They spent a weekend together. Both of them came out of it limping and your Alfred had a black eye, and Al's been… different ever since. He doesn't care as much. Yours has rubbed off on mine. I don't like it," And Matthew looked so desperately forlorn that his world was being tugged out from underneath him and he wasn't managing to keep his balance.

"We are all of us transient," Matt said, eyes shifting just a little away from the Canadian before him as he thought his words through, trying to make himself sound like he cared the way he did rather than the opposite, "We're two worlds meeting. We can't collide like this and not change. Maybe your world gets a little darker; maybe mine gets a little brighter. It's balance, chickadee."

"The world isn't changing, it's just my brother!" Matthew's hands closed into fists and he paled in his anger, his transient skin almost translucent. There were so many words for fleeting and temporary and all of them so horribly applicable, even for eternal beings. You can never cross the same water twice.

"Everyone is changing. Look at you. Look at me," the alternate's voice was soft, pitched to be comforting and missing the mark and that familiar friend loneliness was reeling him in, promising to forgive everything if he would just abandon this attempt and go back to wandering his own North woods the way he used to.

"I am not changing!" the soft frown of Matthew's face had hardened and solidified into an actual scowl, and he wasn't as lax with his attitude any more. He was hard, and resistant.

"You're bold, chickadee," Matt's voice wasn't intended to comfort any more. The denial was grating at his nerves, and he had never really had all too many of those to begin with.

"Bold," the angel's face darkened, and Matt was just a little bit angry that he had tipped the scales too far in this exchange of good and bad, "You're just trying to justify your own weakness."

The resurgence of his own personality was almost what the alternate had wanted, and almost what he feared, some point in the middle that made him feel the neutral thrill of familiar nostalgia as his hand closed around Matthew's soft throat. Not hard enough to actually choke, just hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to make him cough and splutter when he tried to swallow. Just enough to turn that sweet face pink and widen those pretty, dull-bright eyes with fear.

"The chickadee," Matt's tone was conversational at face value, but there was an unpleasantness simmering just below that frost-thin surface and his fingers flexed, "Is a pretty common bird in the Northwest. It's New Brunswick's provincial bird, and it's most famous for being _bold_. It'll eat right out of your hand if you let it. But the thing about being a brave little chickadee, Matthew, is that you have to watch out that your bravery doesn't become cockiness. Because when that happens, the little birdie," it didn't take too much effort to lift that pink, gasping face to his own, "Is _lunch_."

Matt's lips whispered barely a hair above his alternate's skin and he was tempted to steal a kiss from those soft lips before they hardened too much and ended up as chapped and repugnant as his own.

But Matthew was right, he wasn't as hard and cold and cruel as he used to be. Instead, his grip softened, and his fingertips stroked over the red marks that would later be bruises. Excitement at having left his mark warred with remorse over the pain caused. Hand lingering a moment longer, Matt wished he could take back the way the other Canadian flinched back from him as he had done the first time they'd met, when Matt was still an unknown variable.

Thinking perhaps that he should have taken that kiss, he turned and walked away, listening masochistically to the way the little birdie's breathes scraped at his sore throat.

~====o)0(o====~

Matthew was just sitting there on the desk, his shiny shoes replaced with a pair of heavy-duty, clod-hopping hiking boots now that the meetings were all over and they could go back to wherever they came from or move onto wherever they were going to without restraint. Matt stopped, just looking. Watching as the other Canadian swung his legs back and forth from his perch, his boots scuffing Morse code into the floor.

"Back again, chickadee?" the alternate said, moving forward to lay his hand on Matthew's cheek, above the fading bruises he had left. The slowly hardening Canadian jerked away from the touch, refusing to look at his double, choosing instead to examine the wooden veneer on his table top.

"That's the thing about birds," he muttered sullenly, "We're stupid."


	2. You Know That I'm No Good

__**Sequel to Chickadee. **

_I cheated myself_  
_Like I knew I would_  
_I told you I was trouble_  
_You know that I'm no good_

_You Know That I'm No Good_ - Amy Winehouse

There was no air between them as they moved, rocking together with hissing, panting breaths. There were no cries in the night, not howls of ecstatic pleasure, but rather a sharp gasp and a grunt with every thrust. Matthew's wrists were pressed into the mattress, encased in bruisingly clenched fists. Between each hiccupping breath he almost wanted to scream, to shatter the heavy wordlessness that had settled around the pair of them as they made love. His spine arched up, his hips bucked a steady rhythm and his heels dug into the mattress, toes curling as electric sensation

His lips form a word, a name, but nothing comes out of his mouth but another empty puff of air.

The hands at Matthew's wrists move to hold his, their fingers lacing together, still pushing into the warm hollows he's made in the sheets. His nails dug into the backs on the scarred hands in his own and he could feel the dampness of blood welling at his fingertips as their bodies began to move with more force, faster and harder.

~====o)0(o====~

"You're leaving?" Matthew asked flatly, eyebrows raised in disbelief. He looked used and abused in the worst kinds of ways, just the way he felt. Matt had waltzed in with his sameness and his softening heart and slipped right under Matthew's guard. And then he had fucked him; boneless and breathless and now he was leaving, the very next morning.

"You deaf? Yeah, I'm leaving. Dunno when I'll be back," Matt shrugged, pulling on the clothes that last night had piled at the bedside and wearing the same, slightly angry expression that he always did. Matthew was a little angry at himself for not having worked up the nerve to ask him what he was angry at. He probably wouldn't get the chance to ask now.

Matthew said nothing, just getting dressed alongside Matt and fighting down the intense desire to scream and stamp his foot, maybe break something that would shatter satisfyingly. He had gone against his better judgement and let the lousy Alternate in to his home, into his heart, into his _body_ and all he got for it was a stellar lay a goodbye that made him feel that this whole affair was very 'Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am'.

Six months of pussyfooting around each other, sussing out feelings and trying to find a midpoint where their differences were a good thing rather than a bad thing, letting their dark and light merge into a shade of grey that had just burst all over everything. Like a drug mule's cocaine package. Matthew knew, objectively, that life wasn't over, that nothing was going to die and everything was going to be okay.

But that didn't mean it didn't hurt. He couldn't even have a relationship with _himself_ for Christ's sake. Not even a different version of himself wanted him. How utterly humiliating.

"Look, chickadee," Matt said, a little too slowly, like he was weighing his words, and Matthew just wanted him to finish up so that he could slam the door and do something uncharacteristically vicious. Start a fight. Be mean to Alfred. Of course that probably would go completely unnoticed. Because nice people don't say bad things, it never even seemed to register with anyone else when he did, "Like I said, I don't know when I'll be back-"

"So don't bother coming back." And with that, the door that they had floated over to was slammed and Matt was left on the outside, Matthew safely on the inside where he could nurse his broken heart by pushing a bookshelf to the floor and opening a bottle of vintage that mostly ended up down his front when he raised the dusty glass to his lips and let the wine splash into his open mouth.

~====o)0(o====~

"You look like a hangover, chickadee. What happened?" Matt asked, and Matthew tried to pretend that he didn't look concerned.

"Nothing that involves you. I thought I told you not to come back here," Mattie kept up his belligerency, though he rather wanted it to crumble so that he could just say sorry and have Matt apologise too and then they could ride off into the sunset on a polar bear. While he was dreaming, world peace would have been nice.

"Just because you tell me to do something doesn't mean I'm going to listen," All the softness soft edges of his personality that Matthew had carefully sanded down had been sharpened in Matt's time away. If anything he seemed harder than ever. Too hard, too cold, like the flat, glassy wall of a glassier. In fact, Matthew was sure that if he were to look at himself in the polished surface of a glacier, Matt would look back out at him.

"Why are you being so difficult?" the Alternate demanded, refusing to play any kind of cat and mouse with his other self.

"Difficult? I'm being Goddamn _reasonable_! I will put up with a lot of shit, Matt, but you can't just fuck me and leave and then expect me to welcome you back with open arms. That's not how this works," the words he had been biting back in the long, dark absence of his other half worked their way out from between his lips.

"The _fuck_? I didn't _want_ to go, you know. And it's not like you were exactly cut up about me leaving. Stop me if I'm wrong, but it was you who slammed the fucking door in my face and it was you who told me not to bother with coming back!" His patience seemed thinner than when he had left, and for some reason, that was what Matthew was hoping for. Make him act, make him do something, make him shake off that same expression. Make him _care_.

"'You deaf, chickadee?'" It was far from an accurate impersonation, but it got the point across, and Matt bridled, anger cracking through his carelessly composed face.

"You think I can just leave my world and nothing will happen? You think I can just stay here and my country won't dissolve? I _have_ to go back!" the Alternate Canadian yelled, one arm sweeping out in an expansive gesture. A badly calculated one; his knuckles cracked across Matthew's cheek. A glancing blow, but one with a loud enough smack of skin on skin to make it sound like it hurt worse than it did. And it wasn't exactly the kiss of a warm summer's breeze.

His cheek was read and stinging, and clutching it, he watched Matt sink to the ground, the first, light scattering of snow soaking into his clothes as his pale, scarred hands twisted into the knees of Matthew's trousers. Sadistically, perhaps, he thinks that he might like Matt best after he's been struck.

"Chickadee, I can't make this work. You know I can't. I try and I try, but I do everything wrong. I yell, I hit, I try and make love with you but it just ends up- You're the one who can make this work, Mattie. You know I want you. You know I'm no good."It's sweet, Matthew thinks, that his alternate lover couldn't look up, but rather stared at the melting snow around his knees.

Kneeling down beside the floored Canadian, Mattie took the scared hand and lifted it to his glowing cheek, nuzzling into it, uncurling clenched fingers, he kissed the calloused palm. "Yeah, I know you're no good. But the thing about birds, is that we're stupid. Just look at the chickadee. They're bold little birds. They'll eat right out of your hands if you let them. And sometimes that brave, little chickadee ends up being lunch."

Matt's too-bright eyes slowly travelled up, not quiet hopeful, maybe a little disbelieving, a little pleading.

"And you know," Matthew smiled softly, even as a bruise formed, his free hand tucking wild, red-blond hair back into the other's ponytail, "I don't think it minds a bit."


	3. We're Not The Same

"You knew this was coming," Matthew's smile is touched with concern in just the way that always makes Matt feel like maybe his problems are worth sharing, "You had to know."

"I don't have to anything," the taller Canadian says coldly as they stand at the gate between their two worlds.

"You did," Matthew's being kindly, now. As though Matt needs this broken to him gently. He doesn't. He doesn't need this broken to him at all. He wants to ignore it and just plough on with life the way he has always done. Because that was easier than facing the reality that if he didn't step through that wormhole, he could never go back and never go forward. He would be trapped in this world, his country would dissolve and he would die, "You knew it was coming, so let's be adult about this, okay?" Beautiful, patronizing little shit.

"Chickadee," Matt's voice is low and earnest and all the things it shouldn't be as his sleepy eyes watch Alfred's fingers curl possessively around Matthew's hipbone, "I don't want to leave."

"Of course you don't," that same honey-sweet smile is beginning to turn ugly, like the discoloured wax on a hive wall, "You love me."

"I'm not sure I d-"

"You do," Matthew's tone is brusque, all business and his eyes glitter in the light of the wormhole. Matt's inclined to think of moonlight on a frozen pond because few other things are as cold or as hard. Except those eyes.

"Chickadee," the word is a sigh and Alfred's arm tightens around Matthew, who settles happily into the uncomfortable grip. He likes it best when you hold just a little bit too hard.

"Ah, the chickadee," the tone of nostalgia in that sigh is ominous and had the entire situation been cast under a pal, Matt might be tempted t call it foreshadowing, "The provincial bird of Minnesota, Michigan and New Brunswick. It's best known for being bold," there was something just a little melancholic to Matthew's sugar-glass smile, "It'll eat straight out of your hand if you let it."

Even more than the jolt of having those pale hands shove him through a rip in the space-time continuum, it was the realisation that Matthew hadn't been talking about himself that made Matt's stomach turn.


	4. Would I Lie To You, Baby?

**This is it, folks, end of the line for this story. It's not a happy ending, I know, Matt is back in his world and welp. I remember someone asking about the Americas and what they got up to. Enjoy!**

Tommy slumped listlessly in the corner, collapsed like a discarded marionette, head lolling and eyes dead. When had this clash of worlds come to this? Tommy was supposed to be bright and effervescent, burning and exploding with nuclear charge. And yet here he was. And it hurt Alfred to see.

"Don't stand on ceremony," he sighted, lifeless red eyes rolling to meet Alfred's atomic blue.

"Tommy, the bridge is closing, you have to go back," the blond said slowly, a sinking feeling in his gut. The bridge was closing. He was dying.

"Nah," The word was supposed to be a groan but it probably wasn't meant to resonate with pain the way it did, "I like it here. I think I'll stay with you, porkchop."

"No, you can't," Alfred ignored the way his voice hiked on the A, "You can't stay here. You have to go back."

"Don't you want me here?" that voice had no right to sound as broken as it did. Not that beautiful, angel's voice.

"Mattie pushed Matt back across the bridge. I should do the same to you," When had he knelt down? When had Tommy's warm skin cooled so?

"Would you make me hate you first? The way he did?" There was caution in Tommy's eyes. They both knew Matthew could be cruel, and they both knew how much his fond words could hurt.

"Be honest, could I do anything to make you hate me?" Alfred sighed, shifting the doppelganger's unresisting body so that Tommy's head rested in his lap rather than against the cold, hard cement.

"Not even if you shot me," the brunet sighed, voice barely a breath as he pressed his face against Alfred's stomach, nuzzling into it the way a kitten might. It was heart breaking the way the corner of his mouth lifted.

"Tommy," the words clung to Alfred's hearstrings as he forced them out of his mouth, "You have to go back."

"I don't want to," the alternate was visibly paling, tangibly cooling and panic was tearing at Alfred's insides with clawed hands, leaving him empty and useless. He didn't know what to say, what to do, he couldn't even remember what thinking was like.

"You're going to leave Matt all alone in your world?" He asked, fingers playing with the wayward locks of Tommy's fringe, trying to make them lie neatly but not really caring when they refused to co-operate. "You're going to make me watch you die?"

"I had to cross an inter-dimensional barrier to find someone who loves me. Do you think I'm going to give that up for a lifetime of never seeing you again?" There was a long pause, Alfred had stopped breathing and it was with fearful red eyes that Tommy added, "You do love me, don't you? Lie to me if you don't."

The blond nodded, tears finally spilling over as he leant down and kissed Tommy's forehead, his cheeks, the lips that were as cool as their ring. "Heroes don't lie," he hiccupped, even though he knew he was now talking to himself.


End file.
